Massachusetts organizations are preparing to help resettle refugees from Ukraine after the Biden administration announced Thursday that the United States would accept up to 100,000 of those displaced by the Russian invasion of their homeland.
It’s unclear how many Ukrainian refugees might be sent to Massachusetts, but Governor Charlie Baker has said the state will welcome them. Asked Thursday how the state would respond to Biden’s announcement, the Baker administration pointed to a statement the governor made March 1.
“So we worked with the federal government and with the Legislature to put some money together for both the Afghan and the Haitian refugees, and I think everybody feels awful about the horrific events that are taking place in the Ukraine, and we certainly would step up and help some of those folks if they make their way to the US, absolutely,” Baker said, according to a transcript.
Baker’s office did not respond to a question about how many refugees the state might accept but said his administration “has not received any requests for assistance from the Biden Administration related to Ukrainian refugees at this time.”
More than 3.5 million refugees have fled Ukraine in recent weeks, including more than 2 million to Poland, where Biden is scheduled to travel Friday to meet with President Andrzej Duda to discuss the refugee crisis and other matters.
There are six agencies in Massachusetts that work with national partners and the US State Department to help resettle refugees, and the government will determine how many Ukrainians the state can accept by assessing the capacity of each organization, according to officials at two of those agencies.
The US resettled about 75,000 refugees from Afghanistan between September and February, including nearly 2,000 in Massachusetts, of which more than 500 found housing through Ascentria Care Alliance in Worcester, according to Jeffrey Kinney, the organization’s chief of strategic development.
“What they tried to do with the Afghans, and what they will try to do with the Ukrainians, is get as many into communities where there already is a Ukrainian population,” Kinney said in an interview. In Massachusetts, that points to the Greater Springfield area, where there are more than 10,000 Ukrainian Americans, he said.
Marjean Perhot, vice president of Refugee and Immigrant Services at Catholic Charities of Boston, said the organization in recent months has assisted 168 Afghan refugees, who are still deep in the process of getting resettled. Now, her team is preparing to help the Ukrainians.
“We are on standby,” she said in an interview. “We are waiting to hear from our national partners, what will be the call with helping to resettle these refugees that the president has committed to welcoming.”
Perhot said her office typically gets two to four weeks’ notice before a refugee family arrives, and they then begin preparing the case management team and pre-arrival team to help get apartments furnished and ready.
“So by the time we welcome them at the airport, they’re going to a new home, and hopefully have volunteers there to be part of the welcoming process,” Perhot said. “We would treat this as we do any other refugee population that we resettle. It’s just going to depend on what is the ask.”
Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.
Jeremy C. Fox can be reached at jeremy.fox@globe.com. Follow him @jeremycfox.